1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to information technology (IT), and more particularly, to an operating system activation key embedding handling method and system which is designed for use in conjunction with a computer platform that runs on an operating system having a product activation function, and which is used to provide the computer platform with an operating system activation key embedding handling function that allows the manufacturer of the computer platform to embed an activation key into the computer platform during manufacture, such that during actual operation, the computer platform is able to use the activation key for product activation of the operating system preinstalled therein.
2. Description of Related Art
Presently, windows-based operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows XP and Server 2003, are equipped with a product activation function that requires the user to carry out an activation process via Internet or telephone call for activating the operating system after being installed on a personal computer. If the user didn't carry out the product activation process, or the same copy of operating system has been installed on another computer platform, then the installed operating system will be disabled to make the computer platform inoperable by the user. The product activation function can thus help prevent the same copy of operating system from being unrestrictedly installed on an unlimited number of computer platforms.
In the computer industry, PC manufacturers typically offer their computer products with a preinstalled operating system (such as such as Microsoft Windows XP), and utilize Microsoft's SLP (System Locked Preinstallation) technology for product activation of the preinstalled operating system. The SLP technology uses a predetermined activation key whose value corresponds to the hardware configuration of a PC, and embeds this activation key to the PC's BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) module, typically in a predefined BIOS storage area called “F Segment”, such that at the startup of the PC, the operating system can access to the BIOS's F Segment area to retrieve the SLP activation key and compare it to a computed number that is obtained based on the current hardware configuration of the PC. If the SLP activation key is a match to the number, then the operating system is activated to run on the computer platform; otherwise, if unmatched, the operating system is disabled to make the computer platform inoperable by the user.
In practical applications, however, different computer platforms from different manufacturers typically have different hardware configurations based on different customer specifications, and therefore have different schemes in the use of the BIOS to embed the SLP activation key. For this sake, the computer industry needs to set different specifications for the implementation of BIOS to store the SLP activation key, and thus requires the design of many different variations of BIOS chips for assembly to different models of computer platforms having different hardware configurations. This practice is undoubtedly quite uneconomical and thus very costly to implement.